Greetings fellow Elemental Shaman players,

this post will list all the utility we bring to any group and some base thoughts about them.

Shaman spells

  • Astral Recall

    You can escape more often from bad groups. But seriously. This spell offers no utility to any group play.

  • Capacitor Totem

    Control. Valuable AoE stun. The 2 second delay can make this a tricky ability to use.

  • Cleanse Spirit

    Counter. Dispel a curse. Valuable to be able to do it, but not game breaking. Curses are not really “bad” anymore.

  • Earthbind Totem

    Control. AoE slow. Offers control, but costs a GCD. Its short CD makes it quite versatile. But who is kiting stuff constantly and keep a Elemental Shaman in the group? We’re useless if we have to move constantly.

  • Earth Elemental

    Control. AoE taunt. Valuable to offtank some things or to prevent a wipe. Otherwise useless and it not being controllable makes this CD unpredictable. Can save your group from a trash wipe, or pulls more to ensure your death.

  • Far Sight

    Seriously…

  • Healing Surge

    You can top yourself if you’re split from your healer. In these cases you usually either intend to get back to the group anyway (which is delayed by healing yourself) or you frantically try to keep someone alive because not enough heals are ready. But because you stop dealing damage to do so, this is usually not what you’re there for.

  • Hex

    Control. Slightly sturdy single target CC. Useful if a dot is present. Downsides: 30y range and the aggro radius is NOT reduced.

  • Purge

    Counter. Very useful offensive magic effect dispel. No CD. Spamable until out of mana. Downside: one target at a time, you don’t do anything for your main job while dispelling (dps)

  • Tremor Totem

    Counter-Counter. Sounds useful, is useful, but Fear is usually only used as a punishing mechanic if players screwed something up. So…we have a tool to mitigate situations that shouldn’t occur. Doesn’t prevent the application of let’s say fears, so every char will still be interrupted, repositioned and turned into a random direction.

  • Wind Shear

    Counter. Very strong short term interrupt. 30y range. You interrupt yourself to use it. You don’t do your primary job (dps) while interrupting.

  • Water Walking

    Who needs this?

  • talent: Wind Rush Totem

    AoE run speed buff on a long timer. Very very niche and overall not as useful as you might think.

Elemental Shaman spells

  • Earthquake

    Control. One knock-down per target is very strong and provides quite the dmg relieve on the tank. Positioning is important and any form of kiting hurts this ability a lot.

  • talent: Primal Elementalist

    Control. Provides a Stun with the Earth Elemental. Usually unusable due to Earth Elemental taunting everything and wiggling around, endangering any positioning.

Table of usefulness

The following table shows my take on how useful the previously described utility is in these circumstances. Please be aware that for example Primal Elementalist only evaluates the additional single target stun, not the additional defensive as this is not group utility.

  • o…not useful
  • s…under special circumstances useful
  • x…useful
  • ?…questionable
Spell Dungeons Raid World Content
Astral Recall o o x
Capacitor Totem x x x
Cleanse Spirit x o o
Earthbind Totem x o x
Earth Elemental s o x
Far Sight o o ?
Healing Surge x x x
Hex s-x x x
Purge x x x
Tremor Totem ? ? ?
Wind Shear x x x
Wind Rush Totem ? o o
Water Walking o o x
Earthquake x o* x
Primal Elementalist o o o

* Earthquake is usually not needed to relieve the tank from some damage in a raid.

Final Words

As you can see the Shaman class has a lot to offer for Dungeons. While our tools are useful for some Raidevents they are usually surpassed by other specs tools or are already provided by a present Restoration Shaman. Our sole unique Elemental utility Earthquake is widely undervalued for m+ and at the same time a lot less useful for Raids.

Multiple of our tools are counter-mechanics. But the strong drawback of not using offensive spells while applying these counter-mechanics weights heavily. This isn’t noticeable if you Hex once, but if it’s your duty to constantly purge, interrupt, and decurse, it quickly ramps up to quite the significant loss.

Furthermore please note, that our less useful kit in Raids can be fully provided by all Shaman specs. And once you have one present adding the same control/counter again is much less valuable. There is just no incentive to get multiple Elemental Shamans, if one at all.

We’re a swiss army knife. But sadly damage is not our fort.

Yours sincerely, Bloodmallet(EU)